Alexandra DeWitt

Alexandra DeWitt
Alexandra DeWitt
	Alexandra Dewitt as she first appeared on Green Lantern vol. 3, #48
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
First appearance	Green Lantern vol. 3, #48 (January 1994)
Created by	Ron Marz; Bill Willingham
In-story information
Full name	Alexandra DeWitt
Species	Human
Place of origin	Earth
Team affiliations	Black Lantern Corps
Partnerships	Kyle Rayner
Supporting character of	Kyle Rayner

Alexandra DeWitt is a fictional character in the DC Comics Universe. She is the girlfriend of Kyle Rayner before he receives the Green Lantern power ring from Ganthet. She is best known, however, as the murder victim whose manner of disposal led writer Gail Simone to coin the phrase "women in refrigerators".^[1] DeWitt first appears with Kyle at the end of Green Lantern vol. 3, #48 (January 1994).

Fictional character history

Time with Kyle Rayner

As a photographer for a major newspaper in Los Angeles, Alex is annoyed by Kyle's somewhat immature attitude towards work. When Kyle reveals the new ring he has received, she is at first apprehensive, but she agrees to help Kyle train himself to use his new powers. Alex's time with Kyle is short-lived, however. Kyle returns home to find that Major Force has strangled Alex and stuffed her in the refrigerator. This drives Kyle to attack Major Force. In the midst of battle, he almost loses his ring as its power dwindles, but Major Force discloses that the 'green rock' he holds is actually a power lantern, capable of recharging the ring.^[2]

After death

In Kyle's first encounter with Hal Jordan as Parallax, Hal offers to resurrect Alex as part of his plan to recreate the universe, but Kyle rejects the offer. When Kyle moves to New York and joins the Titans, he falls asleep while watching the monitors and his ring makes a projection of Alex. Later, when the demon Neron attacks, he attempts to entice Kyle by offering to resurrect Alex. Kyle, having already rejected the same offer from Hal, similarly refuses Neron's offer. Finally, in a Green Lantern Annual, Kyle and Hal's spirits are switched, so that Kyle's spirit is in Hal's body at the time in which Hal is debuting as Green Lantern, while Hal's spirit is occupying Kyle's body during the time in which Alex is still his girlfriend. Here, Major Force attacks Alex, but Hal is able to prevent him from killing her. However, when Kyle and Hal's souls are eventually returned to their respective bodies and they are back in the present, Alex is once again deceased.

A different version of Alex is found in the story arc "Green Lantern: Circle of Fire", where Kyle summons six different versions of Green Lantern to help him fight off a villain named Oblivion. One of these Green Lanterns is Alexandra DeWitt, who was believed to be from an alternate reality where she rather than Kyle acquired the ring, but she was later revealed to be a sentient construct of Kyle's ring representing Kyle's positive aspect for love.

Another version of Alex appeared by Ion #3, as one of the projections made from Mogo's power and Kyle's own subconscious.

Jade, another of Kyle's deceased loves, and reanimated as an undead Black Lantern, created a black energy construct crafted in an image of Alex from her black ring to torment Kyle.^[3] Alex's remains become a Black Lantern later, trapping Kyle inside a black energy construct of a refrigerator before using her powers to take control of his body, transforming him into a facsimile of Major Force, and forcing him to relive the moments of her death. She tries to mentally break Kyle by saying that, since Force attacked her because of him, he essentially killed her himself. After what happened with Jade, Kyle does not fall prey to the same manipulation. With the help of the Indigo Tribesman Munk, he destroys her after saying goodbye.^[4]

Woman in refrigerator syndrome

Because of the brutal manner in which Alex is killed, and because of the different 'significant others' of superheroes that are constantly in danger of being killed, women in the series who are killed in a particularly violent manner, to further a male hero's story, are said to have suffered from the woman in refrigerator syndrome.^[5]

Alexandra was reimagined as Samantha Dean in The Refrigerator Monologues.^[6]

References

^ The Fanzig Challenge by Michael Condon, October 2002, retrieved January 11, 2006.
^ Green Lantern (vol. 3) #54
^ Green Lantern Corps (vol. 2) #40 (September 2009)
^ Green Lantern Corps (vol. 2) #46 (March 2010)
^ The Fanzig Challenge Archived 2011-07-10 at the Wayback Machine by Michael Condon, October 2002. Retrieved January 11, 2006.
^ Johnson, Ross (7 June 2017). "A Guide to the Comic Book Wives and Girlfriends Who Inspired the Refrigerator Monologues". Archived from the original on 21 October 2020. Retrieved 7 January 2024.